She didn’t eat hearts to survive. She wouldn’t need to kill whoever she fell in love with. Not that she ever had a chance to, locked in her room.
It was the other reason she was hidden away, far from notice. If anyone realized she didn’t suffer from the bloodthirsty Wildling curse, they might guess at what else she was lacking.
“Isla—she is not her mother,” Poppy finally said.
Isla didn’t know what that meant. If it was a good thing or a bad thing.
A bad thing, Isla decided, when she heard Terra say, “That’s the problem, isn’t it?”
With that, all the brush that was crushing her lifted away. Poppy gasped. Isla could hardly feel her body anymore. All she could do was blink up at the sun.
Its warmth was an anchor. A promise—that there would be light at the end of this darkness.
There had to be an end to this pain.
There had to be better days and nights ahead.
She decided at that moment that she would survive the Centennial. Not just for her guardians, or for her people, but forherself.
She would break the curse upon her people and then she would break herself out of this prison.
She clung to that the entire time Poppy pulled wood from her skin, splashed the elixir on her wounds, set her broken bones.
As she drifted into sleep, she thought about a world beyond her room. A world beyond the patch of forest she trained in. A world where she could finally be free to discover who she was, without the heaviness of this crown. That dream was shattered by a voice through the darkness.
“What is this, little bird?”
It took Isla a moment to fully wake. She wiped the sleep from her eyes and took in Terra standing in the center of her room.
Holding her collection.
The doll. The comb. The paintbrush.
Roaring filled Isla’s ears. Her mouth went suddenly dry, and she swallowed. “It’s nothing, I—”
“I found these hidden in the corner of your closet. It’s clearly not nothing.”
Terra examined the objects, frowning in recognition. “These were your mother’s,” she said.
Panic flooded through Isla’s veins, but she fought to keep her voice steady. “Yes. I—I just wanted to...I just—” She couldn’t find the words, didn’t know how to convince Terra to let her keep them. She didn’t know what to say...so she would beg. “Please.”
That one word seemed to seal her fate. Terra’s gaze slowly met hers again. “This is your problem, Isla. You are weak. You are foolish. Youcling to”—she shook the contents in her hands—“meaningless things, when you should be solely focused on training.”
“I am focused. I just—” Her voice broke with a sob. “Please—”
Terra’s hand splayed—
And she turned the wood and bone to dust.
“No!” Isla screamed, the word a guttural rasp at the back of her throat as she lurched out of bed. Everything she had from her mother...gone.
She knelt and reached for the ashes, wishing she had any power at all to turn them back into what they were.
Terra only shook her head. She stepped over the pile, leaving Isla on her knees, sobbing.
Isla wrapped her arms around herself, rocking back and forth. “No. No...” she whispered. Her body ached as she moved, but she didn’t care. This pain was so much worse than any of her injuries.
“I want to leave,” she said to a quiet night that never listened. “I want—I want to get out of here.Please,” she begged anyone.Everyone. “I want, I just want—”
